Presently, nuclear power facilities generate significant amounts of radioactive waste over time. Further, equipment and parts utilized in such facilities also become contaminated with radioactivity. In order to decontaminate such radioactive equipment and parts, the equipment and parts are simply disposed of and replaced during routine inspection and overhaul.
Another current techniques includes coating equipment and parts with a removable layer, and subsequently decontaminating the equipment and parts by removing the contaminated layer and then coating with a new layer. However, this method of coating is problematic in that it is costly and inefficient with respect to effectively removing contamination. Likewise, radioactive waste (i.e. both equipment and liquid radioactive waste) is currently dealt with by confining it to metal drums and dumping such drums in nuclear waste storage facilities, abandoned mines, or sparsely populated rural areas.
As discussed above, contaminated equipment is presently decontaminated only by disposal and replacement. That is, prior to the present invention no efficient method for decontaminating and reusing such equipment was known.
There are several problems with the current practice of disposal and replacement. Specifically, such practice is costly, inefficient and unsafe. The practice of disposal and replacement is unsafe because replacement is infrequent, thus, allowing the accumulation of radioactive contamination to reach levels well above safe levels.
The quantity of radioactive waste produced and dumped increases tremendously every year. As a result, there are fewer and fewer dump sites. This reduced number of existing dump sites when considered along with the population's ever increasing concern with the environment, results in too few new dump sites to meet current and future demands.
The present invention solves the problem of disposal and replacement by providing a method for decontaminating substances contaminated with radioactivity which method reduces radioactivity to a level which falls within the safety standards set by OSHA, thus, allowing such decontaminated substances to be reused or disposed of as general industrial waste.